club's colour, they looked remarkably like bakers.
The Senator had an object in Heidelberg, as he had in so many places,
and that object was to investigate the practice of duelling, which
everybody understands to prevail to a deadly extent among the students.
It was plain from their appearance that personal assault at all events
was regrettably common, for nearly everyone of them wore traces of it
in their faces, wore them as if they were particularly becoming. Every
variety of scar that could well be imagined was represented, some
healed, some healing, and some freshly gory. The youth with the most
scars, we observed, gave himself the most airs, and the really
vainglorious were, more or less, obscured in cotton-wool, evidently just
from the hands of the surgeon. The Senator examined them individually as
they passed, with an inquisitiveness which they plainly enjoyed, and was
much impressed with their fighting qualities as a race, until Mr. Jarvis
Portheris happened to explain that the scars were very carefully given
and received with an almost exclusive view to personal adornment. Mr.
Mafferton appeared to have known this before; but that was an irritating
way he had--none of the rest of us did. The Senator regarded the next
youth he met, who had elongated his mouth to run up into his ear without
adding in the least to his charms of appearance, with barely disguised
contempt, and when Mr. Jarvis Portheris proceeded to explain how the
doctors pulled open the cuts if they promised to heal without leaving
any sign of valour, poppa's impatience with the noble army of duellists
grew so great that he could hardly remain in Heidelberg till the train
was ready to take him away.

"But don't they ever by _accident_ do themselves any harm?" inquired my
disappointed parent.

"There's one case on record," said Mr. Jarvis Portheris, "and everybody
here says it's true. One fellow that was fighting happened to have a
dog, and the dog was allowed in. Well, the other fellow, by accident,
sliced off the end of the fellow that had the dog's nose--I don't mean
the dog's nose, you know, but the fellow's. That was going a bit far,
you know; they don't generally go so far. Well, the doctor said that
would be all right, they could easily make it grow on again; but when
they looked for the nose--_the dog had eaten it!_ They never allow dogs
in now."

It was a simple little story, and it bore marks of unmistakable age and
many aliases, but it